DeLauro weighs in on FEMA money transfer

Published
2:04 pm EDT, Wednesday, September 12, 2018

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Homeland Security Department is pushing back against a Democratic U.S. senator’s claim that the Trump administration transferred nearly $10 million from the government’s disaster relief agency to immigration enforcement.

Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon said the administration was taking money from FEMA’s “response and recovery” to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency at a time when Hurricane Florence is bearing down on the Southeast U.S. coast.

U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, reacted to the news Wednesday morning angrily, telling a reporter at a New Haven event that the government is violating the 1997 Flores Settlement, which limits the government’s ability to keep immigrant children in detention. Sponsors for these children, however, “are not coming forward” because governmental policy has frightened people from giving their fingerprints or making themselves visible, she said.

Additionally, she said the funding for detention camps furthers what she sees as a push to turn the United States Department of Health and Human Services into “an enforcement agency.”

DHS officials said the money was transferred from the department’s unspent operational accounts for training, office supplies and headquarters costs. That funding cannot be spent on disaster response, they said. FEMA’s annual budget is about $15 billion.

Merkley’s office provided a Homeland Security transfer and reprogramming notification document that showed the money was transferred. It shows the money came from FEMA’s operational account.